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what driver should i use for ati 3870?

12-08-2007, 04:52 AM

So I just bought an ATI 3870 after having an nvidia 7800gt and gaming in windows is phenomenal. Unfortunately, I've been welcomed into the world of linux ati drivers and its not very pretty. Right now I'm running vesa and I would love to get compiz/3d acceleration. I tried 7.11 driver but that was a no go. What driver should I use? Does the open source driver support the 3870? I read on here that it did, but I'm not sure how to get a recently updated version or if it really even does support 3d. If all this is for naught, anyone have speculation that 7.12 will support my card? Thanks in advance, I hope ATI wakes up, running linux with my 7800gt was a dream come true.

Comment

The open source driver for r500/r600 only has 2D acceleration. They have not even started to try to implement 3D acceleration yet. They're just finishing basic 2D acceleration, 3D is about a year off. You might have luck with the closed 7.12, or 8.01 but I'd recommend selling that card well it's still worth something. Or trade it in, nvidia has pretty much perfectly working drivers right now. To be honest you might not see even a stable proprietary driver from ati for a year, if ever... I hope not though but they have a really, really, really bad track recored. They have been saying for years their driver would improve, but the gains are pretty pathetic. Go nvidia, from an ATI user of 15 years, but hopefully not much longer if I have some chase left after xmas.

Comment

The open source driver for r500/r600 only has 2D acceleration. They have not even started to try to implement 3D acceleration yet. They're just finishing basic 2D acceleration, 3D is about a year off. You might have luck with the closed 7.12, or 8.01 but I'd recommend selling that card well it's still worth something. Or trade it in, nvidia has pretty much perfectly working drivers right now. To be honest you might not see even a stable proprietary driver from ati for a year, if ever... I hope not though but they have a really, really, really bad track recored. They have been saying for years their driver would improve, but the gains are pretty pathetic. Go nvidia, from an ATI user of 15 years, but hopefully not much longer if I have some chase left after xmas.

ps. ati you're bastards!

Well things semm to have changed.
I have been on Nvidia hardware exclusive in a year before i bought my 2600pro , so im aware of the difference in quality.
Howewer with each release from 8.40 and upward things have inded got better. Amd has always been a good bet for me, and i have faith that they will stear ati the right way forward.

Right now my 2600pro has good performance.
The only problem with is is that under 3d gaming it may suddenly kill xserver , and a hard reset is the only way to fix this. But for the most it behaves good.

Comment

Yea im considering that
But then i would need to install all over again.

my wine version is wine-0.9.49

But how will the xorg.0.log file help ?
After what i known it only shows the startup and intilisation of the graphic cards. I dont think it shows any error message later on when fglrx hard locks the system:/